Paul Liebrand's Weblog

I ran into a strange problem today in SharePoint and thought I would share it with anyone else just in case you have the same issue.

I was in a SharePoint environment that was working as expected. I had a content database that had 8 site collections in it. I detached the database and then re-attached the exact same content database and received the following error message:

<database> on <server> contains user-defined schema.  Databases must be empty before they can be used.  Delete all of the tables, stored procedures and other objects or use a different database.

After a number of attempts, I could not get the database to add.  I created a brand new content DB, detached, re-added it and received the exact same message.

I finally executed the stsadm addcontentdb command with the assignewdatabaseid and the error went away and the database was added successfully. The odd thing is the Current Number of Sites was now showing 0. I queried the sites table and saw the 8 sites in there so I knew everything was good.

I tried the clearing the SharePoint cache without success.

I finally found the root cause of the problem. It appears someone installed a SharePoint patch into the environment but never ran the configuration wizard. So although SharePoint was operating correctly, when re-attaching the database is knew something was run.

I executed the following command which applied the outstanding patch:

psconfig –cmd upgrade –inplace b2b –wait –force

After this, I was able to add and remove the content databases as I expected too without any issues.

I was recently attempting to setup a very specific security model in a SharePoint 2010 environment that I have used in a SharePoint 2007 environment. After I configured the necessary permission levels and SharePoint groups, I went to create a new site and found out that the interface was not displaying the options as I expected.

After clicking Site Actions > New Site and then More Options, I expected to see the option Use same permissions as parent site disabled. Instead, it was defaulted and I could easily switch between Use unique permissions and Use same permissions as parent site without any problems.

Without changing anything related to permissions, I decided to disable Silverlight and revert SharePoint 2010 to the old interface and test it that way.  To my surprise, it worked as expected.

After enabling Silverlight again I decided to experiment with the Permission Levels and discovered that if I unchecked the Add and Customize Pages option, the Silverlight interfaced would then display correctly.

Notice the Use same permissions as parent site is currently disabled.

Does anyone know why the Add and Customize Pages permission level would impact the Silverlight UI in this manner or is there something else I am doing wrong?  This seems like a bug in my opinion.

I am running SharePoint 2010 14.0.6120.5000 (KB2687564).

It appears the User Profile Database growth issue I posted about previously has been resolved with the February cumulative update for SharePoint 2010.

In my previous post, a temporary solution was provided that involved creating a stored procedure and running it on a scheduled basis to clean up the appropriate tables. In reviewing the KB Article 2597150, it states:

This hotfix package provides store procedures that clean up the Forefront Identity Manager (FIM) history tables during profile synchronization jobs.

If you implemented the workaround, I would encourage you do remove it and then install the February CU.

Here is a link to the February 2012 CU for SharePoint 2010:

http://blogs.technet.com/b/stefan_gossner/archive/2012/03/07/february-2011-cu-for-sharepoint-2010-has-been-released.aspx

This morning I received an interesting support ticket.  The reported issue was that when clicking a document from SharePoint it would completely freeze the browser and Word.  I tried it from my desk and was able to reproduce the issue. It was only occurring with a specific document.

Immediately I thought this form must be corrupted. I saved it to my local desktop and was able to open the file without any issues. Bizarre – I click the File menu (I am running Office 2010 but problem exists on both 2007/2010) and all of a sudden Word froze and I received the “Not Responding” message in the title bar. I finally had to kill the process; tried it again, same issue.

I extracted the contents of the DOCX file and started investigating the content.  I noticed that the document had metadata columns from SharePoint with some values in them. One metadata column stood out from the rest because it had about 20 blank spaces at the end of it.

I deleted all the blank spaces, re-compiled the DOCX file, and tested it and the problem was gone.

I thought to myself there had to be something special about this document. So I decided to create a brand new SharePoint library with a couple metadata columns and then created a brand new Word document. When I edited the Word document, I immediately went into the Document Properties panel, keyed in some text, and then added about 20 blank spaces. When I clicked the save button, word hung again with a “Not Responding” message.

Decided to do a few more iterations; I added 1 trailing space, worked fine, 2, worked fine, 3, worked fine. I started to notice that the more spaces I added the slower the “Save” dialog got until I eventually hit about 13 spaces and it no longer returned and Word completely froze.

Under normal circumstances, you should never have this many spaces trailing your metadata but I think this user cut and paste the text from another location and selected too much.

In the past, I have had numerous issues that involved Word freezing when saving or opening but never knew the root cause. We generally fixed it by re-creating the document. I at least now have another location to check before we resort to re-creating a document.

Check it for yourself – you will no doubt have the same issue.

SharePoint is a platform I am pretty passionate about and I have been doing it for many years. Unfortunately, over the past year my priorities at work have shifted to other projects and my SharePoint interactions have been limited.

2012 is going to have some new challenges and learning experiences for me. My organization has shifted my focus and I’ll be living and breathing PeopleSoft for the next year or so. This change will undoubtedly limit my interaction with SharePoint yet again.

I have high hopes to return to the SharePoint platform in the future and I will do my best to remain intact with the community and the happenings around SharePoint.

You will more than likely see a shift in my posts from SharePoint to PeopleSoft related content over the next few months (if I feel I have something to contribute).

Thank you for the continued support – SharePoint definitely has one of the best communities out there.

Anyone else in the community have PeopleSoft experience?  Any pro tips?

Throughout my childhood I always felt close to my brothers. But as my older brother and I started our own families that sense of brotherhood fades. We see each other at family events and in passing but we will never really get back to that point where we were as kids. When you finally realize this gap exists it is too late to make up that time. In recent conversations, we bring up fond childhood memories and relive those moments; always putting a smile on our faces. As brothers, we will always have a strong bond but we don’t always tell each other how we feel.

My younger brother has been dealt a pretty shit hand in life but has always risen above it and has always had the love and support of his family. Frankly, I do not think he realizes how much respect I have for him — this letter is to address that and is written for him.

To my youngest brother,

I see the heart and passion you put into everything you do. As a self taught music producer, artist, and video producer, you continue to grow with every new project. You refuse to believe that you have reached some ceiling and continue to strive.

During your recent stay, we had this silly idea to record a video of me playing all the instruments in Rock Band and then you would edit it all together and create an epic music video. There were some moments during that experience that you couldn’t script and made us laugh so hard. This is totally something we would have done as kids. Having that very specific moment with you brought back that childhood feeling — it is a moment in time that I will remember forever.

While driving home the other day, I was listening to your latest album you produced with Nonsense and I felt an immense sense of pride overcome me. "This is my brother’s creation I hear coming out of my speakers" I thought to myself — I just couldn’t believe it. This new album is definitely a high point in your music career and you should be proud of what you have created.

I had no problem laying down my $8.99 for this album — the feeling of passion and creativeness speaks for itself. I have always supported your work but I have never purchased your work. That ended with this album and it was worth every penny!

You have had many struggles and challenges in your life but I know you will achieve great things.

Standing at this fork in your life journey looking back at the broken road you have travelled; remember that it has built a solid foundation and life experience that is invaluable. The journey forward will be smooth sailing. Never look back but always remember where you came from.

With much love and respect,

Your brother,

Paul

Related Links:

Better Late Than never – Nonsense

Limp Bizkit – Re-arranged by Darkside Productionz and Poogle
Five Finger Death Punch – Hard To See by Darkside Productionz and Poogle

A few years ago I developed a free SharePoint URL Shortener and released it to the community. I have not had much time to go back to it since.  I had some time recently and decided to add a feature that I have wanted to have for a long time and many have asked for.

With the release of 1.0.2, you can now customize the short name before it gets created.  If you do not specify a name then one will be generated for you.

The following screenshots show the process:

If you decide not to customize the name, you simply click “Ok” and one is generated for you:

You can download this solution from my CodePlex site at http://spurlshortener.codeplex.com.

Future plans for this solution include:

• Removing the dependency on Central Admin
• Allowing users to update shortened URLs
• Provide a list of shortened URLs assigned to an item

[Updated]

SharePoint URL Shortener 1.0.3 was released that added initial SharePoint 2010 support.

If your organization is rolling out Windows 7 with Office 2010 in your environment but you are still using SharePoint 2007 you might notice that the “Set as default My Site” option is no longer working. Clicking this link is crucial to enabling the Office / SharePoint integration points.

If you do not already know this, each time you click on the Open or Save menus within an Office product it looks for a special registry key under the user profile. This registry key tells Office what SharePoint farm your user is connected to and will retrieve their SharePoint site membership information. Once this information has been retrieved, it will hydrate the “SharePoint Sites” (or “My SharePoint Sites” on Office 2007) folder.

NOTE: If it successfully finds this location in the registry it will not check it again for up to 24 hours.

I have other posts that explains how this membership works in SharePoint and how to effectively use it with Office.

On to the issue – you will notice that if you visit your My Site with Office 2010 installed you may see the “Set as default My Site” display momentarily and the disappear.

If we look closely at the HTML source of the My Site page, you can see that Microsoft is attempting create a new ActiveX object:

objPersonalSite = new ActiveXObject("PortalConnect12.PersonalSite.1");

If you use the developer toolbar and attempt to evaluate objPersonalSite it will return null.

Searching through the registry, I found no mention of PortalConnect12.PersonalSite.1 – I did however find a mention of PortalConnect14.PersonalSite.1. No wonder the ActiveX control is not working – there is no reference to it on the system.

I took the PortalConnect14 keys and duplicated them and changed the values from 14 to 12 using a registry file:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\PortalConnect12.PersonalSite]
@="PersonalSite Class"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\PortalConnect12.PersonalSite\CLSID]
@="{E7339A62-0E31-4A5E-BA3D-F2FEDFBF8BE5}"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\PortalConnect12.PersonalSite\CurVer]
@="PortalConnect12.PersonalSite.1"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\PortalConnect12.PersonalSite.1]
@="PersonalSite Class"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\PortalConnect12.PersonalSite.1\CLSID]
@="{E7339A62-0E31-4A5E-BA3D-F2FEDFBF8BE5}"

I went back to my My Site and the automatic dialog box popped up asking if I want to set this site as my default My Site:

I clicked Yes and went to the registry location I was aware of (HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Common) but did not see the Portal key I was expecting.  Come to find out, on Windows 7, this is written to another location:

HKCU\Software\AppDataLow\Microsoft\Office\14.0\Common\Portal

At this point, if you fire up any of the core Office applications and click on Open or Save As and wait a few minutes, you should see a “SharePoint Sites” option appear and start hydrating it with all your SharePoint membership sites.

A really poorly styled Word document lead me to write this blog post today to rant!  Is this really that difficult?  I see it all the time – people constantly screwing around with the numbered lists in documents. They decide to re-number something but they change the number and the rest of the numbers change, sometimes they don’t, and sometimes even half of them change.

I have seen people battle with this problem for hours!  In the end, all this headache could have been avoided with about 1 minute worth of effort up front. Most people will rely on Word’s automatic numbering system to figure things out – it’s not worth the hassle… trust me!

In a new Word document, do the following:

• Click the Heading 1 style and type “Heading 1”
• Click the Heading 2 style and type “Heading 2”
• Click the Heading 3 style and type “Heading 3” (and so on)
• Click on the Define New Multilevel List button

• On the Define New Multilevel List dialog box, click the More button in the lower left corner. Select 1 on the left-top and then on the right select Heading 1 as the style to use for the level. Repeat this for all the levels you have defined (in my example, 3) and then click Ok.

Magically your document will be transformed! You will never have to mess with it again!  If you do then it means you messed something up.

Pro Tip

The default behavior when pressing Enter will change the style back to Normal.  If you want to continue the heading styles instead you can solve this easily by modifying the styles of the headings you want this behavior on.

For example, if I select the Heading 2 style and type “Heading 2” and hit enter and I want it to keep the Heading 2 style, so I can type Heading 3, etc. then simply right-click on the Heading 2 style in the styles box and select Modify. Then change the Style for following paragraph to Heading 2.

Now when I press enter, the style will stay.

If at any point, you want to adjust the settings of the multilevel list, simply right click on one of the numbers and click Adjust List Indent and you will be taken back to the multilevel list dialog box.

I don’t think this is rocket science – if it is, then I guess I am a rocket scientist!

I was recently evaluating the web analytic reporting capabilities within SharePoint 2010 and ran into a strange problem.  Although the reports were displaying correctly they would appear blank if I attempted to “Customize” them. After spending a few hours scouring the Internet and reading different posts and solutions I was able to piece together a solution that resolved it for me.

If you attempt to customize a web analytic report in SharePoint 2010 and it comes up blank, make sure you have done the following:

• Started the Claims to Windows Token Service via Central Admin > Application Management > Manage services on server
• Verify the User Defined Function Assemblies via Excel Service Application has a reference to Microsoft.Office.Server.WebAnalytics.UI, Version=14.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=71e9bce111e9429c (Assembly Location is Global Assembly Cache).

If any one of these is not setup correctly, your reports will show up blank when you view them via Excel in browser or in client. Once you have these two things configured correctly, reports display perfect!